I also think a lot of this has to do with my area vs Bob's area. In NJ we have very few restrictions on items, whereas in the entire New England area they don't allow sparklers at any venue and they highly discourage any sort of dancing on cloud or co2 gun effect. Here, all that is allowed, virtually no questions asked. There is a lot more caution there for the small what if's than around here. So our approaches and perspective on these items are naturally different. And again, there they don't have many Wedding specific venues... where they're built from the ground up, ONLY for the purpose of hosting weddings and private events. You can see the difference in the examples he provides. There many of the venues are part of buildings that host other purposes, whether its a commercial building, a hotel, a public area, a restaurant or lounge, etc. When you have wedding venues like the one below, where there is no other activites taking place, all hvac is off in that room, and ceilings that high, there's no chance of any alarms going off.
In New England, sparkelrs must have a pyrotechnic handling the sparklers (which less than 10 exist in the NE area), as well as hiring a fire marshall to be on site, plus a permit. A $500 effect here (for 2 sparklers) is virtually a $2000 effect there.
View attachment 53331